Anti-Empire

May 2010

Meet Holly Norris - a Canadian artist, undergraduate student at Trent University and creator of 'American Able.'

Meet Jess Sachse - a Canadian artist and model who has a genetic disorder called Freeman-Sheldon syndrome.

In her series 'American Able,' Norris challenges the claim that American Apparel uses regular women in their ads. She writes,

'American Able' intends to, through spoof, reveal the ways in which
women with disabilities are invisibilized in advertising and mass media.
I chose American Apparel not just for their notable style, but also for
their claims that many of their models are just ‘every day’ women who
are employees, friends and fans of the company. However, these women fit
particular body types. Their campaigns are highly sexualized and
feature women who are generally thin, and who appear to be able-bodied.
Women with disabilities go unrepresented, not only in American Apparel
advertising, but also in most of popular culture. Rarely, if ever, are
women with disabilities portrayed in anything other than an asexual
manner, for ‘disabled’ bodies are largely perceived as ‘undesirable.’ In
a society where sexuality is created and performed over and over within
popular culture, the invisibility of women with disabilities in many
ways denies them the right to sexuality, particularly within a public
context.

Too often, the pervasive influence of imagery in mass
media goes unexamined, consumed en masse by the public. However, this
imagery has real, oppressive effects on people who are continuously
‘othered’ by society. The model, Jes Sachse, and I
intend to reveal these stories by placing her in a position where women
with disabilities are typically excluded.

As someone responding to this art, I would like to suggest that the strength of this satirical spread is not only its capacity to lay bare the lie that American Apparel uses "regular women" in their ads, but its capacity to force the question: How subversive is American Apparel in all its hipster glory?

Less noted in cultural critiques, American Apparel feeds the capitalist patriarchy with its reliance on the hipster image - an image that, while claiming to be "non-conformist," relies heavily on being commercial for its cultural legitimacy.

In capitalist society, a hipster figure will always be generated by the
way commercialization is necessary for cultural legitimization
(commercial viability has replaced religious sanction in this respect).
The received idea of the hipster proves that a given cultural phenomenon
has become integrated in commercial society, is reliably exploitable,
has no actual subversive potential, is just an insubstantial matter of
style.

Expanding on the role of the hipster in relation to capitalism, Forest Perry ponders,

What if, rather than serving the interests
of capitalism, hipsters were to work towards its dissolution? This would
mean
contributing to their own demise as hipsters, because without
capitalism, there
can be no such thing as “hip.” At least not “hip” in its
current articulation, which depends on elements of today’s society that
would likely disappear were it transformed along socialist and radically
democratic lines. Under such transformed social conditions, there would
be no
yuppies, “the ‘other’ in the neo-bohemian classificatory
system” against whom hipsters define themselves. Nor would there be poor
and working-class people, whom hipsters also rely on for their identity.

Unlike the hipster, the disabled are not a niche
market for conspicuous consumption that can be counted on to save a dying capitalist economy.

As a disabled women who passes for able-bodied, I know that my physical
impairment and disabling environment leaves with me little extra time to be preyed on by marketers cultivating anxieties about "cool" and "pretty" to sell items as basic as socks.

Most women with disabilities - and women with working minds - are too worried about keeping well, paying the bills, caring for families, creating art and making fun of patriarchy to worry about our fucking socks!

Just as Norris argues that women with disabilities are unrepresented in popular culture and are denied a right to sexuality, I would point out that women with disabilities are marginalized as workers and are often denied a right to living wages, leaving them over-represented among those living in poverty.

Women with disabilities may be denied our place in advertisements not simply because we are seen as sexually "undesirable," but because we are not favored as consumers and workers.

To be clear, I am not suggesting that all disabled people face economic hurdles or can't be big spenders. For all I know, Jes Sachse may experience little or no physical impairment that interferes with work. Moreover, she may be changing back into Prada after flipping off American Apparel.

As a disabled women who passes for able-bodied, I know that my physical impairment and a disabling capitalist environment (e.g. rigid work schedules) have hampered my economic mobility. And, while I experience long periods of "wellness," I believe my experiences with disability have only further radicalized me. It is unsurprising that some of the most radical and subversive political movements in Canada are led by organized groups of disabled women, such as the DAWN network.

Unlike the hipster, the disabled person acts as symbol for potential subversion that extends beyond the immediacy of social and cultural norms to entrenched work and production relations.

Norris' series is to be featured in a Toronto subway exhibit titledWhat’s the Hype? which "explores the tenuous relationship that exists
between our everyday lives and the mirror of ‘reality’ that we see in
mainstream media."

Norris tells Torontoist, “These are photos of my friend Jes, She
has a disability. She is really hot. What’s shocking?”

Hell yes.

But, I say: let's be shocking. Let's not only aim to change the mirror of reality, but use our insights from examining illusions to make real revolutionary changes in our everyday lives.